Prejudice can and does come from lots of different angles and in many a horrifying form but in William Grave’s new short In My Day we are taken down quite an unexpected path as he sets the scene for what, upon first viewing, is a typical young blossoming romance. However, through narrative breadcrumbs and a choice to shoot in greyscale black and white, Grave gently unfurls the odd truth behind the increasingly disturbing reactions that people are having to this cross-cultural couple. In My Day is a film that gives you more upon further examination, a testament to the detail and planning which went into this project five years in the making. As part of its online premiere today, Grave speaks to us about finding the perfect locations to evoke the timeless feel he wanted for the film, preparing the audience with subtle precursors to his final twist and dedicating a whole day of filming to his central uneasy dinner scene.
In My Day is a film about hate, prejudice and fear, why did you find yourself drawn to explore these themes?
Fear of the ‘other’ and who that ‘other’ is, evolves and mutates over time. In the late 1600s, there were xenophobic English texts about the ‘scourge of the Dutch’ infiltrating England in language not too dissimilar to how migrants on boats coming over the Channel are described in right-wing newspapers now. The seed of inspiration for the film came from a question I asked myself: as social standards change over time, what could you be prejudiced about in the future? My parents and grandparents weren’t socially behind the times during their youth. They might have even been progressive back in the 1960s and 1970s. But, in the last 60 years, society has radically changed. Naturally, the changes you grew up with in society become the norms you are comfortable with, but what happens when things continue to change further and further as you age? Is it possible that you will one day become the prejudiced old fashioned parent or grandparent around the dinner table saying how things were better in your day?
The seed of inspiration for the film came from a question I asked myself: as social standards change over time, what could you be prejudiced about in the future?
The standards and values we hold dear and champion now might become outdated and perceived as old fashioned faster than we could ever imagine. This is the tension at the heart of In My Day. In my characters Asif and Michelle, I wanted to create a likeable and charming relationship between my two protagonists that the audience will root for, while they live in a world where some people in society are hostile towards their relationship, including the skinheads in the city and Michelle’s family in the countryside. As an audience, we assume Asif’s race is the factor here, as his true identity as a robot is not revealed until the end of the film – leaving the audience to question where their own sympathies and prejudices lie.
I really enjoy the way you lean into the juxtaposition of the old and the new, the modern and the old fashioned especially when they’re with the parents. Was this always in your mind from the conception of the film?
It was there from the treatment stage where I was exploring the type of black and white look I wanted and the choice of a 4:3 aspect ratio to the briefs I developed with the HODs, particularly from costume design to set design and location scouting too, where we found an amazing brutalist estate in Roehampton that could be something from the 70s, now or the future. The countryside itself has a timelessness to it: The fields, the sheep, the pigs and the old country house too are hard to place in a certain era. The throughline with almost everything we did was asking ourselves can it be the past, the present, and the future all at the same time to create a film where we never quite know when it is set? That way, our ending becomes even more powerful when Asif’s true identity is revealed.
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Your dialogue is often halting, from the start where we’re not quite sure of the tone then with the family. How tightly did your actors adhere to the script?
I love rehearsing well before the shoot with my actors. You can collectively find a sweet spot and even a subtle line change. You also have much more time to play and experiment than you do on a shoot day. The opening scene and the dinner’s dialogue were tightly scripted and purposefully a bit austere and awkward, as Michelle’s family does not quite know how to deal with Asif’s presence at the dinner table. It’s almost halting because the characters are having to find the right words in a delicate situation. Whereas, in the first bedroom scene when Michelle and Asif find comfort in each other after being confronted by the skinheads in the city, there was more free reign for our actors Omar Hashmi and Lauren Clancey to add and improvise their own lines of dialogue on that shoot day. The two of them have such natural chemistry when they banter with each other off-screen. I wanted to get as much of that in front of the camera, even when a line isn’t scripted but adds to the character or the theme of the film.
I understand Asif’s hesitancy as the couple are heading to her parents but why do you elicit such fear and foreboding with the animals?
For Asif’s character, the countryside feels like an alien world, the farm animals included. In modern history, most of the advancements in society and technology come from the city, while the countryside is often stuck in the past. I want the audience to walk in Asif’s shoes, showing a harsh and barren countryside that is unwelcoming, perhaps to those who don’t fit in or are not from there, instead of the picturesque countryside we often see in films. This is all in preparation for the next scene – the dinner scene – which is even more claustrophobic for Asif’s character as he is surrounded by Michelle’s family and more countryside iconography within an almost cage-like dining room.
Despite the dinner scene being only a page long in the script, I wanted to create a minute of incredibly awkward silence before a word is said.
The dinner scene is packed with detail, the close ups of the food, all of the intimate glances between the family and the general oppressive feel, was this a challenging scene to plan and execute?
Yes, absolutely, it was challenging but in a good way as you learn with every shoot you do. Keeping eye lines is notoriously difficult in dinner scenes, particularly with six cast members, which is why it was important that our actors always had the rest of the cast to bounce off, off camera when we were doing singles. With every actor staying in character and giving their all to the actor in shot, this not only enhanced the performance but added to the atmosphere of the scene and hopefully a sense of realism where you feel like you’re experiencing the dinner in real time. Despite the dinner scene being only a page long in the script, I wanted to create a minute of incredibly awkward silence before a word is said.
I knew to create that feeling of claustrophobia Asif is experiencing and the sense of being observed, the macro-shots of food being cut, the little looks between family members, the oppressive inanimate objects hung up on the wall seen from Asif’s perspective, we would need an entire shoot day in that dining room out of the 4 days of filming as it required 24 shots. Giving the dinner scene the time it deserved on our shoot, I believe it was well worth it, as it is probably one of my favourite scenes in the film and strangely relatable. My lead actor Omar Hashmi has told me he has lived that dinner countless times in his own life in previous relationships. In post production, Alessio Festuccia and his sound design team did a great job helping to create a cacophony of awkwardness, while I loved collaborating with our talented editor Heather Mills to create a deeply oppressive real-time dinner scene with Asif meeting Michelle’s family for the first time.
Your little nuggets of leading information, those Easter eggs, clueing the audience in work well at become more and more apparent through multiple viewings. Have you seen audiences pick up on these during your festival screenings?
If you are going to have a film with a twist ending, the worst thing is that the audience sees it a mile off. Interestingly, audiences I have met at festivals or people who have seen a private screener seem to empathise so much with Asif and Michelle’s characters and the prejudice he faces, they don’t see the ending coming and only the Easter eggs in retrospect. That feeling of surprise, and then almost second questioning, is crucial to make the audience think about what or who they might be prejudiced about in the future, and then question how they now feel about the couple and Michelle’s family.
That feeling of surprise, and then almost second questioning, is crucial to make the audience think about what or who they might be prejudiced about in the future.
We’re not in the business of misleading an audience. The truth behind Asif’s identity has to be supported throughout the film: from the far-right anti-robot posters in the opening scene to Asif never missing a beer pong shot, the far-right skinheads putting up more anti-robot propaganda in the background of the canal scene to Asif never eating or drinking in the dinner scene, and the fact he never blinks once in the film…the truth is hiding in plain sight, but has to be subtle enough for people not to immediately pick up on it. I hope our audience will find a second viewing just as rewarding and engaging as the first.
I really do love the black and white tones you have lent into for In My Day, was building that textured look more captured in the shoot or developed in post?
In terms of the black and white look for our film, I knew I didn’t want a contemporary ‘clean shot on a Red’ look that wouldn’t be out of place for a Black Mirror episode. It’s important the audience feels this film is a relationship drama in the midst of social prejudice, not a science fiction, until our final shot of the film. I wanted to move away from a contemporary black and white look, and lean more into a greyscale that you see in films from the 1950s and 1960s like Billy Liar and Room at the Top, as well as Tony Scott’s first feature In Loving Memory, and even from black and white photography of the early 1900s.
It’s important the audience feels this film is a relationship drama in the midst of social prejudice, not a science fiction, until our final shot of the film.
In a timeless film, I wanted to be influenced by different eras in the creation of In My Day. Prior to the shoot, cinematographer Brendan Harvey and I worked together to create a LUT that was close to the final look of the film, and we shot on an Alexa Mini with Cooke Panchro classic lenses, which are a modern redesign on vintage lenses from the 1920s-60s. They were complimented with Glimmerglass filters, which really helped create that softer look, instead of a sharper modern day sci-fi Black Mirror look and feel. Working with our colourist Kai Van Beers in post production, I believe we achieved a more textured greyscale grade that compliments a central idea in the film: right and wrong is not black and white. It lives in the grey areas.
What have you been working on since completing this and what can we expect to see next from you?
I’m interested in expanding a subgenre – what I call gritty sci-fi. It’s not quite flying cars and alien invasions but films that have the tone of a drama but have subtle sci-fi elements. It feels like it could be happening in the present, and it’s shot like a gritty drama but also explores bigger ideas that could live in the sci-fi realm. My next short film I’m in pre-production on, will be in that space.
I’m in early development on a feature dramedy, which explores the theme of happiness and is inspired by a true study that lottery winners and people who lost a limb in a car accident are on average as happy as each other after three years. The Problem with Happiness is about a young triathlete, who was responsible for a car crash that left her without a leg and killed her mother, who meets an ex-navy officer and lottery winner when he is close to rock bottom. Together they find hope and meaning as he trains her to be the first amputee to swim the Irish Channel from Scotland to Ireland, her maternal home. I have also recently co-written a coming-of-age feature set in a small Scottish fishing village, which explores the theme of identity and belonging with director and producer Zen Nguyen, due to go into production in the Autumn of 2025. Whatever the story, I love to mix the light and the dark, dramatic and comedic elements, to make people laugh, cry, and think. That is what gets me out of bed in the morning.
